King’s Speech

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I was born in 1936, so I had the privilege of entering national service at 18. I did two years, as we all had to do, because the Act passed by the Labour Attlee Government in April 1947, supported by the other political parties, decided that that was the ideal length, after considerable discussion about whether it should be one year, which the RAF said was hopeless, or 18 months, which I think the Navy said was hopeless. We ended up at two years.

Those two years were for me the experience of a lifetime. I had a place to go to at Cambridge, but that was put off. I joined a whole bunch of other young men from all walks of life. My goodness, what a joy it turned out to be. You learned to mix—I had been a boarder at school, but most of them had lived at home and never lived with anybody else. You had to learn to live with others.

Initially, we were at RAF Kirton in Lindsey. The first thing you got shown was how to make a bed. I still remember that, because the sergeant came around and ripped off most of the sheets because we had not done it properly. We had three months there, then I was privileged to be chosen to train in Canada with people from 10 different countries right the way through NATO that Canada was supporting—from the obvious ones such as us and Canada to the far less obvious ones such as Turkey. I got my wings. After that, I had hoped to carry on for the remaining six months, but that was not possible.

I believe we should seriously look at a modern national service for all our young people. Among the number of young people who are at the moment unemployed, either those who are unable to work altogether or those who choose not to work, there is a core sitting there doing nothing. That is not good for them or for the economy, so there is a huge opportunity.

I took the trouble to find out what the rest of NATO is doing. It is too complicated to cover in a five-minute speech today, but the UK and Belgium are the only two countries in NATO that have nothing. That is not good enough, in my judgment. The enemy, to put it that way, is ever increasing, which is hugely worrying. Against that background, we cannot just sit back and not do something.

I pay tribute to His Majesty’s Government on what they have done, or tried to do, to begin to build up the CCF and one or two of the youth movements et cetera. I respect and welcome what they have done. But there is now the need to be more positive.

Then, there is the issue of how we are going to pay for it. I remember, when I was a small boy in Pinner, Middlesex, outside the library was the Spitfire Fund. Every week, they would adjust by how much it had gone up. Maybe a spitfire is not the right aircraft to choose now, but why can we not have an ISA geared to defence matters? People would respond much more to that than many other issues. I say to your Lordships and to the Government in particular: can we please look hard at this opportunity? I am pleased to see the Minister in his place, and I know he will look hard at it. I have written a book about national service; it will save him a lot of work, because I have been through all the National Service Acts.

Finally, I have two other points which have nothing to do with national service. First, I hope we put real money behind the ELSA project, because the Tomahawk situation does not seem to be as good as it should be. Lastly, there was also an opening speech earlier on from somebody I know pretty well, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and there was a lot of wisdom in his speech.